1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to social networking and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for managing business and social contacts.
2. Description of the Related Art
People interact with each other in person as well as via communications networks. For example, people can interact by telephone, e-mail, instant message, facsimile, and in other ways. More recently, people have been able to interact with each other in virtual environments. A virtual environment is a computer-generated two or three dimensional environment in which participants are able to interact with each other and with other objects in the virtual environment. One context in which a virtual environment may be used is in connection with gaming, although other uses for virtual environments are also being developed.
As the number of ways to communicate increases, managing contact information becomes more important. There are several contact management systems that enable users to collect contact information such as telephone numbers, instant mail contact numbers, e-mail addresses, mailing address, and other contact information. Other contact management systems are available as well. In a conventional contact management system, when a user meets someone in person or on a network, the user may create a contact for the person to allow the user to store contact information in the contact management system. This contact may be automatically generated, or more typically, may be manually created.
Typically, a contact management system of this nature will run on a desktop or laptop computer. Since people generally don't carry around their desktop/laptop computer, portable handheld electronic devices have been developed which can maintain similar contact information. Example portable handheld devices include cellular telephones and personal data assistants, although other types of portable handheld electronic devices may also be used to manage contact information. The portable handheld electronic devices often are able to synchronize with the user's desktop or laptop computer so that contacts entered in the portable handheld device are populated to the desktop/laptop, and vice versa.
Although contact management systems have become fairly sophisticated, it would be advantageous to provide a system that has additional intelligence to enable contacts to be managed in a more natural manner that relies less on manual input and more on system intelligence.